First mover advantage goes to those with already formed opinions. Or, shoot first, ask questions later.
It would be nice to see HN do some A/B testing. Divide viewers randomly into two bins: those who see posts in FIFO, vs those who see posts LIFO; see if there is correlation between which comments are upvoted.
Also, it may be that contentious comments push a thread comment rate up, more partisan opinions cause article upvoting too, collectively pushing the article up in rankings. Less emotive topics/replies let an article slide down into the bitbucket.
It would be nice to see HN do some A/B testing. Divide viewers randomly into two bins: those who see posts in FIFO, vs those who see posts LIFO; see if there is correlation between which comments are upvoted.
Also, it may be that contentious comments push a thread comment rate up, more partisan opinions cause article upvoting too, collectively pushing the article up in rankings. Less emotive topics/replies let an article slide down into the bitbucket.